(01-09-2014 05:50 PM)GirlyMan Wrote: I do not stipulate to the reality of my own existence. You apparently do. ... You are no more a serious metaphysicist than my farts.

Actually, you do. By your own actions, posts and replies. If you imply that actions do not imply existence of anything, then you're being obtuse and a liar. Scientists gave up this kind of dumb denial 400 years ago.

Chas has clarified a different reason for saying no... But even if his answer no was to the question: do you claim there's no principals? In no logical way does that mean
The position must necessarily be that principals do exist... Then I'm amazed you have the gull to say to someone else they don't understand logic when you can't help yourself from introducing more of you never ending assumptions into a logical pathway.

You seriously can't be this idiotic can you? This most be some English communication error.. It has to be right?

The idea of anyone claiming certainty in anything is somehow very unnerving to people. I don't know why, scientific method was built on these basic axioms.
This is logic, either things do exist, or they don't, these are the only two objectively thinkable positions. If you make any exception from that, you have to prove it with scientific evidence (some weird quantum particle? Doubtful.) and then it will not apply universally anyway.
Have you ever heard of the principle of the excluded middle? http://fmmh.ycdsb.ca/teachers/fmmh_mcman...iples.html

The Principle of the Excluded Middle: A thing either is or it is not, there is no in between. What could possibly exist between being and non-being? If it exists, then it is. If it does not exist, then it is not.

It is sometimes suggested that "becoming" is that which is between is and is not. But a little reflection will show that this is not really true. "Becoming" refers to change, that is, some existing thing that is changing. As the word 'becoming' indicates, to change is to "come to be" in some way. If something is changing, then it "is". It must first "be" in order to change in some way, that is, in order to come to be in some way, either more fully or less fully, or just in some other way. So, becoming is clearly on the side of "being".

The logical formulation of the Principle of the Exluded Middle would run: “It is either true or not true, there is no in between”.

Notice how some people subtly deny the principle of the excluded middle when it comes to ethics. Some make the claims that morality is not "black and white", or "right and wrong". The claim is that there are "gray areas" that are neither right nor wrong. In other words, with regard to certain moral issues, there is no definitive true and false, good and evil, or right and wrong.

But this is impossible to maintain consistently. The truth of the matter is that there is always a definitive right or wrong, but at times determining which is which is rather difficult. That is what "gray area" means. It does not mean that true and false somehow disappear in the realm of human behaviour. A trained moralist should be able to help a person determine just what the right course of action really is. For example, consider the precept: "One ought to keep one’s promises." This precept is rooted in the requirement to be fair. But should I keep my promise to visit you in the hospital this weekend if I have come down with a serious cold or throat infection? This is a rather gray area. But it does not mean that it is a matter of indifference what decision I make. On the contrary, there is a wrong decision. It is true that I ought to keep my promises, but it is also true that I ought not to do anything to you that I wouldn’t want done to me, and if I was in the hospital, I wouldn’t want anyone to risk giving me an infection. So it is true that I ought not to keep my promise that weekend.

And so the truth is there, but we have to reason to it, which at times can be like swimming through very murky waters.

Oh Lumi, take that crazy and turn it up to 11 you poor, daft bastard...

"Incidentally, this is why the will needs to be moved by an agent. The will is an immaterial power and as such, has no parts. But if an outside agent can move my will, then my act of the will is no longer mine, but the agent’s, which is contradictory. That is why no external finite agent can move the will of man. Only God, who is infinite, can move the will of man without determining it. Free-choice is precisely the ability to determine oneself. God moves the will of man towards the good in general, that is, the good without qualification. The will of man needs to be moved by God, because nothing moves itself from potency to actuality except by something already in act. Man cannot move his own will from the state of potentially willing to actually willing, for a thing cannot give to itself a perfection that it does not have."

Oh, and the acronym "ycdsb" in the URL means "York Catholic District School Board."

(01-09-2014 05:50 PM)GirlyMan Wrote: I do not stipulate to the reality of my own existence. You apparently do. ... You are no more a serious metaphysicist than my farts.

Actually, you do. By your own actions, posts and replies. If you imply that actions do not imply existence of anything, then you're being obtuse and a liar. Natural philosophers gave up this kind of dumb denial 400 years ago.

Chas has clarified a different reason for saying no... But even if his answer no was to the question: do you claim there's no principals? In no logical way does that mean
The position must necessarily be that principals do exist... Then I'm amazed you have the gull to say to someone else they don't understand logic when you can't help yourself from introducing more of you never ending assumptions into a logical pathway.

You seriously can't be this idiotic can you? This most be some English communication error.. It has to be right?

The idea of anyone claiming certainty even about the simplest things is somehow very unnerving to people. Scientists have no such problems when using scientific method and mathematicians are even more certain about their method. But I need to go back to the first principles in order to apply them to daily life, speech and action. (to judge the consistency of moral rules)
In principle, either things do exist, or they don't, these are the only two objectively thinkable positions. If you make any exception from that, you have to prove it with scientific evidence (some weird quantum particle? Doubtful.) and then it would not apply universally anyway.
Have you ever heard of the principle of the excluded middle? http://fmmh.ycdsb.ca/teachers/fmmh_mcman...iples.html

The Principle of the Excluded Middle: A thing either is or it is not, there is no in between. What could possibly exist between being and non-being? If it exists, then it is. If it does not exist, then it is not.

It is sometimes suggested that "becoming" is that which is between is and is not. But a little reflection will show that this is not really true. "Becoming" refers to change, that is, some existing thing that is changing. As the word 'becoming' indicates, to change is to "come to be" in some way. If something is changing, then it "is". It must first "be" in order to change in some way, that is, in order to come to be in some way, either more fully or less fully, or just in some other way. So, becoming is clearly on the side of "being".

The logical formulation of the Principle of the Exluded Middle would run: “It is either true or not true, there is no in between”.

Notice how some people subtly deny the principle of the excluded middle when it comes to ethics. Some make the claims that morality is not "black and white", or "right and wrong". The claim is that there are "gray areas" that are neither right nor wrong. In other words, with regard to certain moral issues, there is no definitive true and false, good and evil, or right and wrong.

But this is impossible to maintain consistently. The truth of the matter is that there is always a definitive right or wrong, but at times determining which is which is rather difficult. That is what "gray area" means. It does not mean that true and false somehow disappear in the realm of human behaviour. A trained moralist should be able to help a person determine just what the right course of action really is. For example, consider the precept: "One ought to keep one’s promises." This precept is rooted in the requirement to be fair. But should I keep my promise to visit you in the hospital this weekend if I have come down with a serious cold or throat infection? This is a rather gray area. But it does not mean that it is a matter of indifference what decision I make. On the contrary, there is a wrong decision. It is true that I ought to keep my promises, but it is also true that I ought not to do anything to you that I wouldn’t want done to me, and if I was in the hospital, I wouldn’t want anyone to risk giving me an infection. So it is true that I ought not to keep my promise that weekend.

And so the truth is there, but we have to reason to it, which at times can be like swimming through very murky waters.

The Law of the Excluded Middle is not universal. It is a construct of two-valued logic.

It is a narrow rule, not applicable to anything that is continuously variable like ethics.

Please read an actual book.

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.

(02-09-2014 05:39 AM)Chas Wrote: The Law of the Excluded Middle is not universal. It is a construct of two-valued logic.

It is a narrow rule, not applicable to anything that is continuously variable like ethics.

Please read an actual book.

The answer to the question of existence is two-valued.
You presuppose (Cjlr alert!!!) that ethics is continuously variable, without justifying it.
That is not an argument, that is nudism of bare-ass naked assertions.

(02-09-2014 05:39 AM)Chas Wrote: The Law of the Excluded Middle is not universal. It is a construct of two-valued logic.

It is a narrow rule, not applicable to anything that is continuously variable like ethics.

Please read an actual book.

The answer to the question of existence is two-valued.
You presuppose (Cjlr alert!!!) that ethics is continuously variable, without justifying it.
That is not an argument, that is nudism of bare-ass naked assertions.

(02-09-2014 06:28 AM)Chas Wrote: No, you are claiming that the Law of the Excluded Middle is universal. You have not proved that.

The philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine argued that the rules of logic are revisable, much like the axioms of geometry.

Law of the Excluded Middle is the basic position. Occam's razor, two positions. In order to disprove that, you'd need to take up your burden of proof and find an additional concept of incomplete existence. And that concept would need to have 100 % existence or you couldn't use it at all. Hence it would be a self-detonating statement.
At best, an "incomplete existence" would be an empirical oddity in some freak accident of quantum world and even then it would be just a bad name that scientists gave to some phenomenon, which in itself fully exists.
How much of God do you disbelieve in, when you say there is no God?
Just think about it. Try o imagine a partial existence of something. The more I think about it, the more I realize how impossible it is. It's just our crappy natural language that allows to string these two words together.

I don't know what do you mean by revisable axioms of geometry, I'm not familiar with that process. Scientists can certainly find out a more efficient or precise way to calculate some shapes, but does such a change create two different concepts of a circle, for example?
I only know that logic is derived from universal properties of energy and matter, not from their instances like empiricism. There may be errors and imprecision in how the natural language tries to approximate the properties of matter and energy and that may certainly be subject to revision, but not matter or energy itself, that is always consistent.
Yes, people can make up whole worlds of new logic, but only thanks to consistent behavior of electricity in their brains and these worlds are only as substantial as the calories they put into thinking.

(30-08-2014 05:20 PM)Luminon Wrote: ...
Oh, you might say, these systems are just technical, consensual stuff that the society uses to organize itself, they have nothing to do with truth, justice and virtue? Great! Spell that out please, in big letters.
...